The Forgotten
by BrotherOfSteel
Summary: Old story I'd started a while back. At the end of the confederacy, many installations and research projects were abandoned and forgotten. but what happens if one of the deepest and darkest secrets of the confederacy is rediscovered? R&R please!


As he looked out at the stars Michael Liberty was in a deep state of thought, as he usually was when faced with a coming conflict. Standing on the bridge of his battlecruiser, the _Ares, _he was a somewhat imposing figure, Liberty was in his late twenties with brown hair and eyes, and was a man of average height, extremely intelligent, and experienced to boot he was a rising star in the Dominion space fleet. However his loyalty to any Terran agency had died long ago. His family had dutifully served the now dead Confederacy for almost 3 generations. He would have as well except Arcturus Mengsk and his little band of rebels had overthrown the tyrannical and aging Confederacy. It didn't matter now anyways, with the Zerg and Protoss appearing out of nowhere and destroying many of the core Terran worlds, most of the political squabbles ground to a halt once Mengsk had assumed power. At first this seemed a good thing but as with all tyrants Mengsk could not hide his true nature forever. Having personally watched the man send over 250,000 people to their deaths at the hands of the Zerg simply to keep himself in power, Liberty swore he would find a way to unseat the dictator and build a government that would benefit all Terrans.

Though he hated the Dominion down to his very soul he remained in their service, his aim had been to find something that he could use to prove his worth and genuineness to the number one enemy of the Dominion, James Raynor. And this small written off confederate fringe world might hold the key to that goal. As he finally looked away from the never ending vastness of space he looked over his bridge and his well oiled crew, many of which held the same opinion as he did about the Dominion and were just as ready and willing to defect as he was. Michael then turned to his 2nd in command, Lieutenant Mark Johnson, and said quite simply "have we completed our scan of the area yet Lieutenant?" Johnson looked up from a screen that he had been scrutinizing only seconds before, and responded "Most of it sir, though the dark side of the planet and the science vessel itself are currently out of our reach."

"Damnit" Liberty swore under his breath, "I'd rather not get to close to a potentially Zerg infested vessel but I suppose that its more to our advantage if we be as quick as possible to avoid any kind of 'Dominion' contact out here." He looked back out the viewport for a few more seconds then made his decision," move the fleet closer to the planet and prepare a strike team to scour the vessel for any kind of information that we may find useful." As the fleet mobilized Liberty thought back as to exactly why they were here; he had a received a tip from one of his few contacts left at the numerous weapons and technologies labs that the dominion now ran. The tip had come in the form of a complete list of every confederate science research facility and vessel, most were either destroyed or were already in the hands of the dominion, but this one, science vessel GR-02253 was different. There wasn't much information as to what the hell had been going on there. But with a security classification so high that the old families couldn't have looked at it even if they said please, it was obviously something that the late fleet admiral Parker thought was well worth protecting, and that made it valuable to Liberty and his men. Normally Liberty would have taken a tip like this with a whole shaker of salt before committing his fleet to searching it out. But this was one of his most valuable contacts, Professor James Malkovich who had used to be the head of research for the Confederacy but now ran a weapon research facility on Dylar IV.

Liberty snapped out of reverie just in time to see the planet of Morcadia come into view, it was classified a C-class planet, that is habitable but only with extreme amounts of assistance, short version it had no atmosphere. With no valuable resources initially found by the survey team the planet had been left to float around its binary stars and the system had been abandoned, except for that science vessel. Liberty was worried less so about running into other dominion ships out here, though that was a problem as captains out here in the fringe worlds typically had very loose leashes and went where they pleased. The issue of running into the Zerg or Protoss was a much more likely and dangerous event, given the fact that this was a fringe system and the aliens would probably attack them on sight. Unlike other dominion ships who would close and open comm channels, giving Liberty the element of strategic surprise necessary to win a quick fight. As his fleet of 4 battlecruisers entered orbit Liberty noted the debris field and wondered exactly what had transpired here, before he had the chance to speculate the lieutenant reported to him, "sir we're coming up on the dark side of the planet, apogee in 2 minutes." "Thank you lieutenant, bring us to about 500 klicks off the vessel and hold there." Liberty responded, he wanted a stealthy insertion for two reasons, first was that it was a definite possibility that the vessel was Zerg infested which could endanger his whole fleet if they got too close. And two it was not uncommon for science vessels to be booby traps when abandoned at the end of the Confederacy so as to cripple rebel ships who attempted to plunder their secrets.


End file.
